Chiral Nanostructures: New Twists

Abstract

RecommendationsC hiral objects cannot be superimposed on their mirror images.This seemingly simple property has unifying importance for physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and medicine, 1 which is the underlying reason why the chirality of nanomaterials represents one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding fields of science.The emergence of this field was catalyzed by the discovery of intense polarization rotation in individual nanoparticles (NPs) and their assemblies.The observations of chirality-dependent electron-transfer phenomena at nanostructured interfaces gave rise to a multitude of studies on the chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect.The rapid development of chiral nanomaterials in these and other directions over the past decade is reflected in the numerous articles in ACS Nano advancing the field.Here, and in the accompanying virtual issue, we select and highlight a few of them.A wide variety of chiral nanostructures have been synthesized, often with unexpectedly high enantioselectivity.Their geometriesas the reader will see in the selection of papers in this virtual issueinclude tetrahedral, helical, twisted ribbons/sheets, angled nanorods, and other shapes.Most of the work on chiral nanomaterials has been devoted to noble metals, predominantly gold, giving rise to chiral plasmonic nanostructures.Group II-VI semiconductor NPs represent the majority of studies on chiral excitonic systems, including the emergent family of chiral perovskite nanostructures.Chiral forms of nanocarbon obtained by chiral separation or direct enantioselective synthesis reveal plasmonic, excitonic, and quantum chiral states.Among new chiral materials that have emerged lately are biomimetic chiral nanocomposites and micromanufactured nanostructures, often referred to as chiral metamaterials.Nanostructured materials often, if not always, display chirality at multiple scales ranging from angstroms to nanometers and microns.Chirality at the molecular scale typically originates from small molecules  both chiral and achiral  adsorbed at nanoscale interfaces.These molecules are often of biological originamino acids, peptides, lipids, and DNA.Nanometer-scale chirality is associated with chiral

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